No. 1129

Carp a la Chambord—Common Carp

Carpe a la Chambord--Carpe Ordinaire

Procure common carp; scale it by slipping the blade of a knife between the scales and the skin, empty it out, cut off the gills, wash and wipe dry. Remove the skin from one side of the fish so that the meat is exposed, and stud this side with truffles; fill the inside with a fish quenelle forcemeat (No. 90), into which has been mixed a quarter as much cooked fine herbs (No. 385); cover with thin slices of fat pork. Braise the carp in a white wine court bouillon (No. 39). Instead of studding the carp on one side, after it is cooked, the whole body may be covered with a light layer of the forcemeat then brushed over twice with egg-yolks, allow to dry and imitate fish scales, using for this the tip of a soupspoon; beginning at the head. Cover over with thin slices of fat pork and in either case lay the carp in a fish kettle moistening it to half its heighth with a white wine mirepoix stock (No. 419), adding more moistening as fast as it evaporates; when the fish is done let it acquire a good color, then dress with the garnishings around in clusters, composed of mushroom heads, glazed truffles, trussed and glazed crawfish tails, smelt quenelles decorated with truffles and milts a la villeroi (No. 698), with the third part of a genevoise sauce (No. 469), to which the broth has been added and the whole reduced; pour over the mushrooms and send the remainder to the table in a sauce-boat.

← No. 1128 Carp Eels, Pike, Carp & Sturgeon No. 1130 Carp Breaded and Broiled, Maitre d'Hotel →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a grande cuisine set piece from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, and it is written as a node in a network: five cross-references stand in for the forcemeat, the court bouillon, the braising stock, the sauce and the villeroi coating. Read those numbers first, because half the work is in them.

The hinge: braise, do not boilThe fish is moistened only to half its height and topped with fat pork, so the exposed upper half steams while the lower half simmers. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble and top up as it reduces, as the recipe directs. A rolling boil will break a carp into pieces before the forcemeat sets.
DonenessRanhofer gives no time. A 4-5 lb stuffed carp needs roughly 45-60 minutes; the forcemeat is the limiting factor and should reach 145F at the centre of the cavity. The flesh at the backbone should just release.
Fat porkThis is unsmoked back fat (fatback or fresh pork belly fat), sliced thin as a barding sheet, not bacon. Smoked bacon will overwhelm the wine and truffle. Salt pork can be substituted if soaked and blotted.
MiltsSoft roe — the milt sacs of male fish. "A la villeroi" means poached, coated in a reduced allemande-type sauce, chilled until firm, then breaded and fried. Sold occasionally as shad roe's counterpart or as herring soft roe; ask a fishmonger, or leave the cluster out.
Fish kettleA long oval poacher with a perforated rack is what makes this dish liftable. Without one, use a deep roasting pan with the fish on a doubled sling of cheesecloth, and lift with the sling.
Common carp todayFarmed or live-tank carp from an Asian or Eastern European market is the practical source; wild carp from warm, still water can be muddy. Scaling by sliding the knife between scale and skin leaves the skin intact, which matters for the second method, where the false scales are drawn on.
The imitation scalesThe alternative finish — forcemeat over the whole body, two coats of egg yolk, dried, then scalloped with the tip of a soupspoon from the head back — is a decorator's trick, not a flavour one. Let each yolk coat dry to tackiness before the next, or the pattern smears.
Crawfish and trufflesThe recipe calls for trussed and glazed crawfish tails; trussing here means the tail bent and held in shape before cooking. "Glazed" is brushed with reduced meat glaze for shine. Fresh black truffle is the intent; a good preserved truffle is the honest substitute, jarred truffle peelings are not.
YieldRanhofer gives no yield. A whole carp of this size with its garnishes and quenelles would plausibly serve eight to ten as a course. It is a platter dish, meant to be presented whole and carved at the table or on a sideboard.

A Little History

Chambord is among the grandest of the classical fish preparations, named — by tradition, at least — for the royal château on the Loire and often said to derive from the hunting-lodge cookery of the French kings; the style — a whole freshwater fish, larded or studded with truffle, braised in wine and ringed with clusters of quenelles, mushrooms, crawfish and truffles — was codified in the nineteenth century and treated by Carême's successors as a test of a saucier's range. Carp is the natural subject because it is a Loire and pond fish, large, firm-fleshed and forgiving of long braising, and because Christian fast-day cookery had made freshwater fish worth dressing up. Charles Ranhofer put it in The Epicurean (1894) as part of a full chapter of eel, pike, carp and sturgeon dishes, at a time when Delmonico's was serving European freshwater fish to New Yorkers who mostly ate saltwater ones — the carp had been widely stocked in American waters in the 1870s and 80s and was still, briefly, a fashionable food fish rather than the nuisance it later became.